


Red, White, Green, Black

by I Am Your Spy (GroteskBurlesque)



Category: Space Invaders
Genre: Dark Crack, Violence, silliness, thinly veiled commentary on u.s. foreign policy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GroteskBurlesque/pseuds/I%20Am%20Your%20Spy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We have always been at war with someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red, White, Green, Black

**Author's Note:**

> This is another ancient fic that I'm posting for posterity and because I'm faintly ridiculous.

The beat isn’t the worst of it by far, but it’s the part I never got used to.  _Thump-thump,_  near enough to a human heartbeat that it makes me think of blood, not near enough to be comforting or familiar. It starts slow, speeding up as it approaches,  _thump-thump-thump-thump_  until all the world is fire and sand and that endless rhythm.  _Thump-thump._ The last sound I’ll ever hear.  
  
I don’t know why the invaders came. I didn’t think to ask. They are always coming, after land or oil or water or whatever abundance their greedy eyes have sighted on. I see nothing here that anyone sane would want. Just sand, and rubble, and centuries of hatred and death.  
  
I am the last of our band of three, and if I have survived, it is not because I am faster, or smarter, or even a better shot, but because the others were braver. While I cowered behind the burned-out shell that had, in another lifetime, been a schoolhouse, I watched Yusuf burn to death, screaming, on the other side of the empty window. His arm is still there, blistered black and upraised as if in defiance to the sky. Rahim died yesterday, caught by a cluster bomblet he couldn’t dodge as he took down one of the drones with his RPG. If I must die, I pray that I will die as he did.  
  
I know that I do not have very long to live. The buildings are rubble around me, pockmarked by enemy fire and our own bullets, more obstruction than shelter now. No matter how many of the invaders we shoot down, they are always coming, always faster, always closer. Waves and waves of them, pouring from the sky. We chalked up points, carved slashes in our AK-47s and the ashes that blackened the wall. Twenty for a drone, a hundred for a bomber, more even for a carrier. The surface of my gun is rough as sandpaper. We traded grim jokes, but the enemy is relentless, its resources unlimited. We, the city’s defenders, never stood a chance.  
  
Only once did we catch sight of the enemy. A brief glimpse before we ducked behind our failing shelters, recoiling in horror, our minds failing, not large enough, not deep enough, to keep what we had seen inside. Like great insects, the drones floated pale in the night sky. Skins white and glistening with pus, tentacles coiling and uncoiling as they rained death over the scorched earth.   
  
They descend upon us in rows, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired somewhat by [this series.](https://www.behance.net/gallery/348954/Invaded-Space)


End file.
